02 April 2008

April Fools' Memories

Every April Fools' day it reminds me of my first 4/1 in the game industry. I had been working on Ultima Online for about six months and it was still run by Origin Systems in Austin, TX. The players had rose-colored glasses of the era of UO that came with the first expansion (The Second Age) just prior to the second expansion (Renaissance). There was always a post on the forums calling for a pre-Renaissance server.

So on April Fools' I decided to give them just that. I tweaked some flags on the test server to turn on the much more difficult "Siege Perilous" ruleset and renamed it "UO Pre-Ren".

I wish I still had a link to the post on the forums with the player responses after that.

In retrospect, while it may seem a little mean, it was well within the spirit of the holiday. And you've just got to expect stuff like that on April Fools' day.

ALSO: I just checked the Rock Band song list to see if there were any new songs worth downloading. At first I thought the new song was just an April Fools' joke, but it's for real! I'm jammin' away on it right now! Best of all, it's free!